Nvidia suit seeks to block Samsung phones, Qualcomm chips

By Susan Decker and Ian King

Bloomberg News

Posted:
09/04/2014 04:11:31 PM PDT

Updated:
09/04/2014 04:11:32 PM PDT

Nvidia, a maker of graphics chips and processors used in mobile phones and tablets, filed a U.S. trade complaint claiming Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics processors infringe its patented ways to improve graphics.

Nvidia is seeking to block imports of the latest Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets that use Qualcomm's Snapdragon graphics processing units or Samsung's Exynos processors. In the complaint, filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission Thursday in Washington, D.C., Nvidia said it seeks to stop Qualcomm and Samsung "from their wholesale infringement of Nvidia's important visual computing technologies."

Improved graphics processing units, or GPUs, are becoming more important as smartphones and tablet computers are increasingly used for playing games and watching movies. Nvidia, with its Tegra chipsets for tablets and phones, has failed to make a significant dent in Qualcomm's leading share in that market and hasn't become a major supplier to Samsung or other major handset makers.

Nvidia introduced the Shield tablet earlier this year to expand the Santa Clara-based company's move into mobile devices.

Nvidia said in the complaint that it's tried since August 2012 without luck to reach a licensing agreement with South Korea-based Samsung, the world's biggest maker of smartphones.

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"Samsung has negotiated based on delay and by pointing the infringement finger at its chipset suppliers, such as Qualcomm, or third parties that supply GPU technology to Samsung, while continuing to reap enormous profits from the Samsung-branded products shipped into the United States and elsewhere," Nvidia said in the complaint.

The Samsung products targeted in the complaint include the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy S5 phones, and the Galaxy Tab S and Galaxy Note Pro tablet computers.

Nvidia, which already licenses technology to Intel Corp., is trying to increase the amount of money it gets from other companies that it says use some of its graphics-related patents, Chief Executive Officer Jen-Hsun Huang said on a conference call with analysts.

"This is an important part of our overall company strategy," Huang said. "The size of the use of our technology is much, much larger in the mobile market."

Legal Action

Nvidia is in productive discussions with other companies, Huang said. He declined to identify them or say whether he intends to extend legal action to include other companies.

Nvidia said it also filed a patent-infringement suit making the same allegations in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. That case is likely to be put on hold if the ITC agrees to investigate the complaint.

Adam Yates, a spokesman for Samsung, and Christie Thoene, a spokeswoman for San Diego-based Qualcomm, said their companies had no immediate comment.